IDL and ARC unite to widen product focus
Call Manager ISV developers talk up 'synergies' of acquisition
Two voice application developers for Cisco's Call Manager IP telephony (IPT) systems have tied the knot.
IDL, part of the Mettoni Group, bought larger rival ARC Solutions from administrators late last month.
"John Knowles, the principal shareholder at ARC Solutions, will stay on the board, and we're keeping the staff, intellectual property and contracts. We will have the biggest Cisco IPT user base in Europe," said Richard Betts, managing director of IDL.
Alex Black, strategy director at Omnetica, said: "We deal with IDL, and the people are great. For IDL this is a great acquisition because it is very focused on Cisco's AVVID architecture, and this brings plenty of applications to IDL."
Mettoni Group was created following a management buy-out (MBO) of IDL, Datapulse and STS in 2002. STS later split off in another MBO.
ARC held top spot in the ranking of Cisco's Call Manager ISV developers. IDL is believed by those close to the firms to be in second or third place. The firms' VARs include Kingston Communications, Omnetica, Dimension Data and BT.
"The only question would be about a migration path for ARC's customers," said Black. "IDL's user interface is very good, and if this makes life easier, great."
ARC's operator console will be merged with IDL's console, directory and call billing packages. Datapulse - a sister company to IDL that makes software for Nortel's telephony - has a similar console product to IDL's, with a comparable user interface.
But, according to Betts, while there remains a little overlap between the two companies' reseller bases, it is not a significant one in terms of products.
"Some (of ARC's) products are aimed at SMEs, and we were targeting the mid-market and high end, so we are using the synergies of these strategies to go from SMEs to large government departments," Betts said.
IDL has just finished development of a series of products for Call Manager Express, Cisco's IPT system for small and medium-sized businesses.
ARC Solutions' administrators, Portland Business and Financial, declined to speak to CRN, and Cisco was unavailable for comment.
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